Temporal Displacement
by nostalgia
Summary: Clara is pregnant. Or she will be. Probably.


She was dancing when it happened. They were in some sort of nightclub and her dance partner was a pleasing-alien probably-man with an extra eye and tentacles, chosen partly to prove to the Doctor that she didn't find aliens weird or scary. Anyway, the Doctor had claimed to be unable to dance and was sitting watching her from the bar, so he wasn't an option right now.

Which didn't mean she wasn't trying to impress him. She danced with her alien in a way that she hoped was sultry and seductive, every now and then stealing little glances at the bar to make sure the Doctor was watching her.

He was, which pleased her more than she'd care to admit. She twirled around her partner and laughed at his stupid jokes, because it wasn't his fault that she wasn't interested in him.

When the room started spinning she wondered what she'd had to drink. The Doctor had Isaid/i it wouldn't kill her, but how reliable was he, when you got right down to it? She stood swaying out of time with the music, and realised, as though from afar, that she was fainting.

It was pretty impressive, she thought as she lost consciousness, that the Doctor managed to cross the room and catch her before she hit the ground.

()

Clara woke up in the medical bay on the TARDIS, relieved to find that there were no needles stuck in her. She sat up as the Doctor waved something metal and probably-sonic over her.

"What happened?" she asked.

"You fainted."

"Why?"

"Ah," said the Doctor. "You might want to be sitting down for this."

"I _am_ sitting down." She frowned at him. "Is it something serious? Am I dying?"

"You are... that is to say, you will be... potentially... there isn't really a simple way to put this..."

"What," she asked icily, "is wrong with me?"

"Temporally displaced pregnancy," said the Doctor.

She understood one word of that, but it was an important word. "Pregnant? How can I be pregnant? I haven't had sex since before I met you!"

"Temporally displaced," the Doctor repeated. "You haven't... attended the conception yet. But you will, and then you'll be pregnant."

"That's stupid!" she protested, trying not to panic.

"It's perfectly normal if a little uncommon. Happened on Gallifrey all the time. My own mother, in fact, used to say that she -"

"It's not normal for humans," she insisted. "I've never heard of it."

"It can happen if you're having a Gallifreyan baby." He looked at her suspiciously. "Do you know any other Time Lords?"

"No! I thought it was just you, you're the only one left."

"Were you," he asked, "planning on having sex with me?"

"No," she lied. She grabbed his wrist as he started poking at her abdomen. "Look, I don't want to have a baby. Is there any way out of this?"

The Doctor nodded. "You could try abstaining from sexual activity with Time Lords."

"I've _been_ abstaining! But I'm somehow knocked up anyway!"

The Doctor touched her shoulders, trying to calm her. "You have a three-week temporal dislocation. That means the sex you should avoid happens in three weeks. Just don't do it. Easy."

She slapped him away. "Is it yours?"

"In the absence of other Time Lords I'm going to say yes," he said, stepping back from her. "Which is ridiculous, because I don't want to have sex with you."

Clara tried not to feel hurt by that, which was stupid because it was Igood/i that he wasn't about to impregnate her. "Right," she said.

The Doctor looked at the medical displays. "This is really quite fascinating. I don't think temporal dislocation has ever been observed in a non-Gallifreyan."

"Well, you're not observing it in me." She slid off the examining-table onto her feet. "Is that all I have to do? Just not have sex with you?"

"Yes."

"Well," she said, "that should be easy enough."

()

The first week went fairly well, all things considered. Being told that she couldn't have sex with the Doctor had the not-really-surprising effect of making her think about it a _lot_, and she wondered if he was having the same problem. Probably not, she decided, because he was the Doctor and above that sort of thing, most likely.

At the end of the first week they ended up sharing a bed.

"Are you sure about this?" she asked, kicking off her shoes.

"Why, do you think we'll accidentally have sex in the night?" He looked amused by the very idea.

"No, but... well, things happen. Sometimes. When a man and woman are in the same bed."

"Clara, I can sleep on the floor if you're that worried." He looked doubtfully at the dirt floor beneath his feet.

"It's fine," she relented, "just... keep your clothes on." She lay down and stared up at the ceiling. "This is sort of funny, really. That it happens when we're being careful."

"I thought we were always being careful," he said. He stopped himself and added, "I don't mean..."

"I know what you mean. It's okay." She shifted a bit to give him room as he got onto the bed next to her.

"Night, Clara," he said, and she could hear him smiling.

When morning arrived she found that the Doctor was spooned up against her with an arm round her waist. Which would have been nice, under normal circumstances, but now it just made her worry that they were going to do something fun.

She tried to move away from him, but he wrapped his arm around her more tightly and sighed into her hair.

"River," he muttered.

Clara froze. Okay, that was _good_, wasn't it? He wasn't over Professor Song, he wasn't going to start shagging Clara Oswald any time soon. It was... really good. She wondered how she was going to extract herself from this situation without embarrassing anyone. She decided on a pretended coughing-fit.

The Doctor let go of her as he woke. "Clara, are you okay?"

"Something in my throat," she said. "Probably just dust."

He sat up behind her and rubbed her back. "As long as it's not a parasite."

She frowned. "Is that likely?"

"Probably not."

"Good, I've got enough of those to be getting on with."

()

She started to feel like a ticking bomb. Worse, the Doctor had started treating her like one. He wasn't touching her as much as he usually did, or complimenting her cleverness and bravery as effusively as he had done.

Which meant, she deduced, that he was thinking about having sex with her. That was bad, and she tried to convince herself of this fact even as she worried about getting accidentally pregnant. Maybe they could just be really careful? Couldn't they just use a condom or something? Did that not work with aliens?

She shook the thoughts from her head. Best not to do anything. Just in case.

()

She could blame the TARDIS for the next incident. If the TARDIS hadn't been shaking so much then Clara wouldn't have landed on top of the Doctor, her legs on either side of him and her hands on his chest.

"Um," he said.

"Don't worry, I'm not planning on getting comfortable here." She pressed against him to get some leverage, using her other hand to fix her skirt a bit where it had ridden up her thighs. She stopped and looked down at him suspiciously. "Is that an erection?"

"That's the sonic screwdriver," he said easily.

Clara moved her gaze to where the sonic lay beside them. "I think you're lying to me," she said after a moment.

The Doctor closed his eyes and banged the back of his head off the floor. "There's a pretty girl on top of me, there are only so many ways my body can respond to that. Honestly, it's nothing personal."

"Oh, thanks." She pushed herself up and off him, pulling her clothes back into position as she stood up. "This is ridiculous," she said. "If that had happened two weeks ago we'd just have laughed."

The Doctor stood up. "You're right."

"I'm not going to explode if we touch. I am actually able to control my sexual urges, you know. If I don't want to have sex with you then I just won't do it."

"Simple," said the Doctor, "but probably effective."

She made her excuses and headed off for a very cold shower.

()

She knocked on the door of the room and then entered without waiting for an answer.

"I've been thinking," she said.

The Doctor looked up from his bed, moving his eyes to the wall when he saw what she was – or rather wasn't – wearing. "Clara!" he yelped.

She sat on the edge of the bed. "I think we should just... get it over with."

The Doctor drew his legs up to his chest as though trying to protect himself from her. "I don't think that would be a good idea."

"What if I'm destined to get pregnant?"

"Time doesn't work like that," he told her.

"Well, it's driving me mad!" she exclaimed. "It's all I can think about!"

"That's probably just hormones," said the Doctor, helpfully.

"What, like you haven't been thinking about it too?"

"I'm a Time Lord," he said, as though that explained and excused anything.

She sighed. "Maybe you should just take me home for a bit. Get me out of the way."

"I don't want to get you out of the way. I like having you around the place. You're... decorative."

"Oh, thanks."

"And you're my best friend," he added. "I'd get lonely if you weren't here. I hate being lonely."

Clara stood up. "I'll go back to my room. This was a stupid plan."

"It was a bit," the Doctor agreed.

()

The third week was almost over when Clara woke up next to the Doctor. She wasn't entirely sure what had happened, but she could make a few educated guesses from the nakedness and the state of the sheets.

She sat upright. "Well, shit," she said.

The Doctor opened his eyes. He looked at her for a long moment and then said "Something's not right."

"You can say that again," said Clara glumly.

He picked his trousers up off the floor. "This is wrong. This is very wrong."

She lay back down on the bed, pulling the covers up a bit. "You're not really making me feel good about this."

The Doctor looked at her. "What happened?"

"Don't you remember?" she asked, annoyed.

"No," he said, "and I should. I don't just forget things. Not like this. Do you know how it happened?"

She shrugged. "You were on top, I think, and we just sort of went at it until we were done."

"I mean," he said, "how did it start? What did we do, what did we say?"

Clara bit her bottom lip. "I'm not sure."

"Exactly my point." The Doctor was half-dressed now. "I'm going to the console-room, I'll see if the TARDIS has any ideas."

She nodded. "I'll just... mope a bit."

The Doctor shook his head and held out a hand to her. "I need your help. I almost always need your help."

()

The TARDIS took them to a place full of yellow flowers. A group of locals came towards them, smiling and talking in a language Clara didn't understand. "She's not translating," she said.

"No," said the Doctor, "she's being polite."

"Polite? Since when was that old cow polite?"

"Don't call her an old cow," he said automatically. He smiled at the natives and said something to them. "I'm asking if we've been here before," he told Clara.

"I don't think we have," she said. "I'd remember this place."

The Doctor shook his head. "They're time-sensitives. They remember the future as well as the past."

"...right."

"Ah," said the Doctor after some more conversation. "Mystery solved." He took a proffered cup full of green liquid and handed another one to Clara. "Drink up."

She sniffed at the cup. "What is it?"

"Don't worry, if it any ill-effects you'd have felt them by now." He sipped from his own cup. "This is what got us drunk last night."

Clara caught on. "It works backwards? Wait, is this how I got pregnant?"

The Doctor nodded. "They were only trying to help. They sensed... or will sense... your impending condition and wanted to help resolve any paradox."

"That's... sort of horrible," she said.

The Doctor finished his drink. "It wasn't that bad."

Clara stared at him. "I thought you didn't remember anything."

"Not then, but I do now. I'm catching up with events. Same with you, I expect."

Clara realised that she did, indeed, remember a lot more about the previous night. And, yeah, it wasn't that bad.

()

The Doctor had all sorts of pills in the medical bay, including the sort that prevented the patter of little time-feet.

Clara looked at the little red and blue pills in her hand. "Are you okay with this?" she asked. "I mean, I could be having the last of the Time Lords."

The Doctor handed her a glass of water. "I don't think that would be a good idea."

She nodded and downed the pills with a drink of water. She swallowed and said "So, are we dating now?"

"I don't date," said the Doctor.

"How did you manage to get married then?" Clara countered.

"Oh, she tried to kill me a few times. It was quite romantic."

Clara prodded his arm. "I'm serious, are we like... an item?"

The Doctor shrugged. "I don't know. Why don't we just see what happens?"

"In the right order?"

"Yeah," he said, smiling, "in the right order."


End file.
